The Administrative Court of Santa Cruz de Tenerife has ordered that Tolerancia Street, whose name was changed in 2020 to Architects Saavedra and Díaz Llanos, should revert to its former name. This name was chosen under the Historical Memory Law in 2008 to replace the then current García Morato.
As determined by the Court in 2023, the reason for the annulment of this act is that the procedure was not followed. The mayor, José Manuel Bermúdez, from the Canary Coalition, opted to make the change by decree rather than by plenary agreement.
In 2023, the City Council filed an appeal with the High Court of Justice of the Canary Islands (TSJC) urging the architects’ relatives, one of whom is still alive, to present their arguments for not changing the name back to Tolerancia Street.
However, none of them attended, so the case has returned to the original Court which once again sides with lawyer Antonio Padilla, although the City Council has filed an appeal with the TSJC which will be answered by the lawyer.
The Court admits that on certain occasions the Mayor’s Office can proceed with this type of name change, as permitted by the Special Regulations of Honours and Distinctions of the City Council, but only under “exceptional” circumstances which did not occur in this case.
As a result, the Decree challenged by a local resident, who has so far been supported by the courts, is annulled, pending the TSJC’s determination.
The municipal corporation’s lawyer reiterates that there are “exceptional” reasons for the name change that allow recourse to the Special Regulations of Honours and Distinctions where they are “implicitly” included, given that one of the architects had died in 2021.
This was coupled with “their significant achievements for the city, along with the fact that his professional colleague was elderly, which would explain the urgency for granting this distinction.”
The urgency was therefore based on the Council’s interest that the architect who is still alive, Javier Díaz Llanos, be present at the event. However, it is maintained that at most “a defect in form” and an “irregularity” would only be invalidated if it led to defencelessness.
“The mere fact that the reasons for urgency justifying the honour granted directly by the mayor through a Decree may not have been sufficiently explained does not constitute a procedural defect of sufficient nature and entity to allow it to be equated with the absence of the procedure itself,” the City Council maintains.
In successive sentences, the courts consider that there is no justification for what constitutes an exceptional case and the extraordinary causes that reasoned the use of the Decree route, omitting the essential procedures established for this type of process.
Specifically, a prior consultation should be carried out by the mayor with political groups or a report should show the urgency to take this step due to a citizen request, which was not resorted to in any case.
